


Cloudless Deeps and Starry Skies

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: College, Conversations, F/M, Fluff, Memories, Poetry, Short & Sweet, Sweet, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, University, romantic, workplace relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 06:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12163734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: Jonah remembers a poem from his college days. It reminds him a little bit of Amy. She tells him her favorite poem and it surprises him a little bit.





	Cloudless Deeps and Starry Skies

**Author's Note:**

> Just a sweet little story, written after a grass fire. I hope everyone enjoys it.

Jonah Simms would always have fond memories of his semester in Professor Aubrey Keren's literature seminar. English 3001, listed in the course catalog as “Major Trends in British Poetry: The Early Nineteenth Century,” was titled much more whimsically on the syllabus she handed out on the first day of class: Romance and Requiem. It seemed appropriate. The dry description of a time period did not do justice to the throbbing passion with which she approached Coeleridge in his reveries or Keats, Shelley and Byron dying young.

Part of the class' appeal, and he'd have been lying through his teeth to do anything other than admit this, lay in Professor Aubrey herself. She was a tall woman in her early forties, handsome rather than conventionally beautiful, with long, auburn hair, smoldering, deep blue eyes, high cheekbones and a prominent nose that highlighted her Choctaw ancestry. The fact that she wore no makeup enhanced rather than detracted from her striking appearance, as did the scar crawling across the left wrist and hand she'd laid open in a hunting accident. Her propensity (it was whispered) to take an occasional lover from among her students created a certain rock-star aura that no young man could resist.

Jonah had, to his everlasting regret, not been selected as her paramour for that fall semester. He had become fairly sure, by the time he sat down to his final exam, that the rumors were in no way true. They were, instead, the collective wishful thinking of a generation of young men gone calf-eyed for the unattainable, desirable woman in a plaid shirt, tight jeans and cowboy boots that lectured to them three days a week and, when discussion time rolled around, actually seemed interested in what they had to say even—perhaps especially—if it did not make any conventional sense. He knew that he had followed her like a puppy for the entire term and matters had not progressed beyond a conference held over dinner at the university's trendy corner bistro, longing glances (from him) and a warm hand laid over his in sympathy for a low grade on the mid-term. 

In spite of his inability to tempt a woman like that into bed (and, let's face it, that one was always gonna be a long-shot) the class proved valuable. Iit was, indeed, one of his favorites during those wandering college years when one needs an elective or two and can't figure out quite what to take. She'd instilled in him a love for the poets of that era, an appreciation for how they used words and—what's far, far more important—an understanding that they burned with an inner light and how to apply it to situations far beyond the cozy classroom in Alford Hall room 228.

His current situation, for example, provided a perfect exercise in the practical understanding of how powerful and important poetry could be. One didn't find a person that could be said to stock shelves elegantly, very often, but watching Amy rise on tip-toe to place an Xbox One S (brand new Gears of War edition!) on top of the “Funtastic Pyramid of Fun” in Cloud 9's electronics department convinced him that anything, no matter how mundane it seemed, could be art if the artist proved able enough. He sighed, and whispered to himself, “She walks in beauty, like the night.”

Dina, whose ability to stalk unheard or seen could inspire envy in any ninja, appeared at his shoulders. “You think the night's beautiful, huh? No chance. There's wolves at night, coyotes, the occasional puma. You go walking in all that beauty...” She drew her finger across her throat. “There won't be much left of you but a pile of bones.”

He grimaced. “Thanks for the, uh... tip, Dina.”

She nodded. “Safety around large predators is one of my main interests.” She checked the chart in her hands. “Aren't you assigned to athletic goods, today? The big net full of soccer balls is almost empty.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, those balls aren't dangling themselves. Get on it.”

“Okay,” he said, “sure.” There was nothing he could have said funnier than the possibility, after all, and Dina wouldn't have gotten it anyway.

She gave him a comradely slap on the shoulder. “Good man.” He left Amy to her work in electronics and went to do his own.

He thought more of the poetic comparison while he filled a rust colored nylon net with the junior sized soccer balls that became enormously popular every fall when youth and gunner leagues picked up their enrollment numbers. Byron had been right about the sun—Jonah knew this with the veracity that only a man with fair skin could approach. Though it had been kind to Amy, baking her soft, warm and golden, it left him blistered, peeling and in pain. Although she could sting, from time to time, she'd never scalded him and, he believed, never would.

The moon, however, shone with a dewy light like her dark eyes and, like her face, was wreathed in darkness that only made its light all the more glorious by contrast. The only difference he could imagine between Amelia S. Dubanowski and the silver moon (apart from that she wasn't a celestial body, of course, and would kill anyone who suggested she was a quarter the size of the earth) was that lunar light was borrowed. Amy's light came from within and warmed everyone it fell on.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. “Hey, you... what's up?”

Jonah turned and felt his heart leap up into his throat. Had thinking about her so hard summoned her? Were his thoughts so loud that they'd become audible? “Oh, nothing. Just, you know, hanging balls.”

She frowned. “I'm so glad that I didn't call your cell phone. Out of context that could have been... really disturbing.”

“Oh, so I see we're taking it to a homophobic place,” he said. “Nice, Amy. Super woke. Super 2017.”

She laughed. “If you want to take it that way, sure. And please don't ever, every say 'woke' again.”

“So instead of 'I woke up at 8am' I need to say 'at eight hours past midnight I arose to take my running leap at the day.'”

“You can do that, sure,” she said. “Or you could talk like a normal person? That's also an option.”

“But such a hard one.” He clasped his hands behind his back, returned them to the net, couldn't figure out what to do with them. “So, uh... Amy... you ever read much poetry?”

“Yeah.”

“Got any favorites?”

She paused in thought for a long moment. “Lots of different things... but if I had to pick a favorite... hmm...” She scratched her nose. “I'd have to say Lady Lazarus.”

His eyes widened. “Sylvia Plath? Nice.”

“What about you?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Lots, too, but... I've been thinking about She Walks In Beauty a lot, lately.”

“Byron?” She wrinkled her nose. “He's kinda... douchey, isn't he?”

“I guess,” he said. “I mean, in a Byronic sort of way.”

“A Byronic douche is, nonetheless, still a douche.”

“That is, in itself, pretty poetic.”

She bent to help him with the soccer balls. “I can be sometimes, I guess.”

“Amy...” He struggled for the right words, couldn't begin to find them.

“Yeah?”

“You'd look great with red hair.”

She giggled. “Don't make my favorite poem weird, dude.” They stocked the balls together, largely in silence while late evening moonlight poured through Cloud 9's glass doors.


End file.
